Delta Force: Task Force Dagger

The Good
I loved Delta Force Land Warrior. You'd tell me that Task Force Dagger (TFD) is based on the same gameplay and same engine graphic, so why give as title "Not worthy of your time"?

I made the mistake to not listen to professionals. I bought the game because I wanted to renew the experience Delta Force like I've felt with Land Warrior, even if the scope for sniping was giving me hard times. But I enjoyed it.

And now, I wish I hadn't spent my money.

But don't be afraid, everything isn't negative. So, I'll begin by pointing the fact that you have the choice between 10 teams. If you want to be a simple soldier but faster than anyone, you can be a member of SFOD - DELTA (US Army Special Force Operational detachment) or of JTF-2 (Canada). If you want to be an heavy gunner, with big chainguns, choose to be a Green Beret (USA) or a Marine Force Recon member (USA). You want to be a sniper? Play as a CIA SOG (Special Operations Group) member or as a SAS (UK) one. And if you prefer to be someone explosive, I mean, with grenade launcher or anything else that can make kaboom, choose to be a SASR (Australia) or a Ranger from the US 75th regiment. Finally, you prefer to do your job without sound or to be the best swimmer, so, be a SEAL Team 6 member or a CSAR (US Airforce Combat, Search and Rescue). But if you're playing multiplayer, SEAL and CSAR are also medics.

As you can see, teams are diversified but not unique. What is a pity is that the medic is only available in multiplayer. Playing a medic in TFD single player campaign could have been a good idea...

Well, for the weapons choice, you have 14 primary weapons, 3 secondary ones, 5 sidearms, 3 explosives. My favorites are the OICW Assault Rifle with 20mm grenade launcher (a zoom of 6x, 3 modes of firing, great design), the PSG-1 Suppressed Sniper Rifle (only silent weapon for sniper with a zoom of 4x) and the M82A1 Barret Sniper Rifle (14x for the zoom but the problem is the sound, it's very noisy). Yep, I love playing sniper, if I have the choice to take a weapon with a scope, I'll take it.

You can also ask for an aerial strike; you have the laser designator for that. Not as fun as in Conflict Desert Storm or Vietcong though.

Delta Force isn't a game that is difficult to play. I mean, it's intuitive like most of the FPS games. You just need to shoot. Infiltration phases aren't so difficult if you're used to the concept. Graphics are correct; Novalogic is known for developing its own graphic engine. But I must admit that it's inferior to what was done at that time. Soundtrack is also a very good point.

The Bad
Delta Force TFD is the same as Land Warrior, the previous game. I saw somewhere someone saying that TFD is a Land Warrior with another clothing. I agree with this opinion, nothing had really changed.

What I regret the most is the absence of characters with a background. You're just a poor member of a team, without personnal history.

But what disappointed me is the fact that I didn't finish the single player campaign. Because of too many enemies AND the fact that I was killed in the first seconds of the last mission I've played. How to get past it? I'm sure there is a bug somewhere, if you exclude the ones with the graphics (like bodies floating or between two walls). I mean, I was so close to finish the campaign. I was feeling like a bad player or a noob in the FPS world when I actually considered myself like a good player when it comes to play single player campaign.

Another problem is the 3rd person perspective. You can play it in this FPS, but it's unplayable. You don't have the a great accuracy and you're not at your ease. I missed the way Tomb Raider or Max Payne were giving you the feeling that you could do a lot of things without being bothered by their back. So why include the possibility when it's a scary view in this game? Why Beta Testers didn't report the problem? Or did they only test the 1st-person perspective? Or perhaps they thought that it was like a bonus and that a few people will play with the third-person perspective...

The scope when you're sniping is placed on the side of your screen. For having a global view it's great but for sniping it's not a good thing. It seems so unrealistic. I mean, it sounds like you can snipe and see the global situation at the same time as if you have more eyes than 2.

The map isn't really useful, only for viewing your road. But the rest, I've never understood it. Even with the manual. Perhaps it was the fact that it was in English when I'm a French language native... Uh? Yes, I was being ironic, because I understand English very well. So, it's more a problem of explaining things from Novalogic than my skills.

It was also good idea to take as background a recent war, because some players will be happy to be part of a still-going conflict (or at the time of the release, a new conflict) but the lack of individual characters and personality is making the storyline mediocre.

I also had the impression that the AI wasn't really great but I can't really remember what stupid actions the enemies made, apart from the fact that they stayed long enough in the same place, shooting at me, making easier for me to kill them. I love that kind of games because I can strike easily but I don't feel like I've really beaten them.

The Bottom Line
If you want to try, I can't prevent you from doing it. It's a good soft for the ideas but the campaign is so difficult that I can't really have pleasure. Weapons are great as is the sound. No individual characters with a name isn't a good idea. The scope could have been a good idea but it's so disappointing that you'll have an hard time to be used to using it.

But final word is: Not worthy of your time.

The Good
Lots of action // Stealth required at times // Fun locations // Lots of tangos to kill // Lots of weapons to try // Nice multiplayer support

The Bad
Unrealistic weapon performance // unrealistic tactical scenario (one guy vs. the world) // 10 special units actually have almost nothing distinguishing them // most of the weapons are virtually identical with minimal operational difference // most missions can be done with the same weapons // UAV and commander's map too powerful

The Bottom Line
Delta Force / Task Force Dagger is an attempt to cash in on Operation Euduring Freedom (i.e. invasion of Afghanistan) by Novalogic. They came up with some missions based very loosely on the missions actually undertaken by SpecOps troops and Rangers. The problem is, those real missions involved hundreds of people, and these missions are one-man shows where one (or sometimes, two) guys kills dozens and dozens of terrorists in your way.

As long as you keep in mind that you're NOT going to find too much realism in this game, it can be enjoyed quite well. There are a lot of weapons available. Half-dozen or more pistols, a wide variety of assault rifles, sniper rifles, even light and medium machine guns are available. There are even anti-tank rockets and demolition charges, plus grenades for additional firepower. Many of the weapons are silenced, giving you plenty of stealth if you want it. However, operationally, there really isn't any difference between some of the weapons. I mean, an Austeyr is almost the same as SA-80 or M-16, except for magazine size and minor details. Differences don't mean much operationally.

The maps really do give a sense of size, as the maps are measured in square kilometers, instead of often claustrophobic maps in other games. Sniper action becomes very important, and enemy snipers can and will target you.

Buildings aren't really detailed, but that could be forgiven. The hills and such are nicely contoured and organic looking, thanks to Novalogic's voxel technology.

Enemy AI... when set on easy, they are horrible, as they don't attack much if at all. They'll shoot at you if they see you, but that's about it. On regular or HARD, they are more aggressive and more resistant to damage, providing more of a challenge. The problem is all of the enemies look the same. Seems they all wear green camo jackets, bandoliers, eyepatch, and a green turban. Never saw any variation, such as facial hair, turban color, and so on. Guess Novalogic want to keep the enemy ID easy.

Supposedly you can choose from any of the 10 different units, but that just means you gain one of the five special abilities for being in a particular group, and even then those abilities don't really affect play that much, and you can even turn off the special abilities if you wish.

The "campaign" is just all 25 missions played together, and kills are recorded. You can also play specific missions in any order as "Quick Missions".

In the mission you can call upon "Commander's Map", which is like a god's view of the stuff nearby, and it's WAY TOO powerful, esp. on easy, when you get to see the location of every enemy AND THEIR FACING, even if they are UNDERGROUND! With this, you have no excuse to being shot as you have the ability to sneak up behind the enemy and kill them in the direction they do not expect. This feature is WAY too powerful and one must practice NOT to use it.

You can control an UAV's cameras in the mission, but there's really no need to.

The missions are generally man-vs-world type where you're dropped behind enemy lines, kill lots of tangos, find an object or two, and get out. That is NOT the way special operation guys work. They go in as a team, they come out as a team. On the other hand, it is kinda fun. Just imagine you're really a supersoldier doing a whole team's job.

Soem special mission have you riding on a chopper shooting at enemies below. Those are interesting as it provides a new set of challenges, as your shooting platform is constantly moving and you need to adjust your aim a bit. If you can hit someone from the air with sniper rifle, you must be pretty good. However, those special missions are very few.

DF/TFD's multiplayer is supported through NovaWorld, and lots of maps and play modes are supported. This is excellent... If you can find enough good players. By now, most players have moved on to Joint Ops / Escalation, so the cupboard is looking a bit bare.

All in all, DF/TFD is another chapter in unrealistic military shooter pumped out by NovaLogic. Take it for what it is, and you should be happy with it. Don't expect realism and you won't be disappointed.

The Good
It's Delta Force, still the last word in First Person Shooter realism. You shoot, and the bullet travels quickly, but not instantly, and there's no one in the game who needs any more than 1 headshot to kill. You travel into a battle zone, have a short mission, then leave, like a real Special Ops agent. Also, you're not able to simply jump into any vehicle you see, like in other games like Delta Force Xtreme, as if either you can hijack any vehicle you find instantly, or every terrorist in the world is dumb enough to leave their keys in their cars and trucks. Plus, added to this particular game is the UAV, which while generally not easy enough to use to spot individual enemies, it's nice to see a real-time layout of your battlefield so you can plan your action. Another little touch added was that now you can see a plane fly overhead when you designate a target. You still don't see the bombs though. Just the explosion.

The Bad
Well, personally, I think some of the things people could criticize about this game aren't necessarily a bad thing in this case. Sure, there's no music, the graphics aren't exactly breathtaking, the enemies aren't particularly clever, and many of the missions involve minimal teamwork, but I'm fine with most of those. I've never heard of Special Forces playing music while they're on a mission, nor have I heard Afghanistan in real life referred to as "pretty", so the lack of music and bland scenery in this case just adds to the realism. As for the AI, friendly and enemy, I think they're sufficient. Enemies will turn towards you if they hear you, and shoot you if they see you, but neither friend nor foe is superhuman, meaning your allies will probably die rather quickly without your help. However, though it made the game more doable, I didn't like the excessive hesitation NPCs had, some taking up to 3 seconds after seeing an enemy to open up fire, and the excessive bad aim of some, such as when some NPCs use automatic weapons, sometimes they end up not compensating for the recoil at all, and shooting way above their targets.

But, without a major overhaul, which could hurt speed and game play, I'd say there's really only thing I'd change about this game if I was making it would be fixing the bugs. Now, Novalogic has never been known for making games bug-free, but this one seems to have more than even the average Novalogic game, and this game seems especially buggy. You have to wonder when playing the game if Novalogic did any beta testing at all before releasing the game. Its bugs are many, but here are some I noticed while playing: 1. First, and most importantly, when I first started playing, sometimes when I fired the screen would go all weird, with images flashing on and off, that wouldn't quit until I restarted the game, and would sometimes come back the very first time I fired in a level. Novalogic tech support helped me with this one, and come to find my graphics card is too new for the game. I installed an older graphics card, and that fixed most of the problems, but it also made movies look washed out on some of my media players. 2. Sometimes when I started the computer, it wouldn't acknowledge Novalogic was even in the CD-ROM drive. Usually fixed when I took it out and put it back in 3. When you drop your main weapon, if there's not a full clip in it, when you pick it back up it'll be miraculously loaded with another clip. So, if you drop, say, a M249 "Minimi" SAW machine gun, which has a 200 round clip, and before you drop it, it has 197 rounds left, and you have 1 spare magazine, if you pick it up again it will have 200 rounds left, and 0 spare magazines. Those 197 rounds just disappeared, and the weapon miraculously was reloaded sometime between when you dropped it 2 second ago and when you picked it up. It's the opposite when you load. If you have 2 shots left and 1 spare ammo clip for the SAW when you saved, when you load the game you'll have 200 shots left and 1 spare ammo clip, as if exactly 198 extra bullets appeared in your gun when you loaded. 3. In the last mission, I was walking down an underground ramp, and suddenly appeared 30 feet away, above ground. It only happened once, but it was weird. 4. Sometimes when you demolish a building, be it by air strike, SLAMs, or whatever, it'll explode like other buildings, but then its graphic won't change, and it'll look exactly the same as before the explosion. I'm not sure if this happens with other buildings, but it happened to me when I tried to demolish a small house. 5. When you smash a window, by firing it or an explosion or whatever, if you go up to the window, it'll look like there's still a window there, even though firing again at the "phantom window" doesn't do anything.

Also, though it's not so much a bug, it seems a bit unrealistic to get intel (as in, knowing the exact location of soldiers and direction their facing) on people in buildings or deep underground. Kudos for Novalogic for not giving intel in missions set in cloudy or foggy weather, but I just don't see how it's possible to get the exact location of every soldier below 40 feet of dirt. It did make things easier, though.

The Bottom Line
It's Delta Force. If you're not a fan from the start, chances are you'll like at least one Delta Force game out of sheer frustration. It's one of the only FPS games set in modern times, a rarity these days with so many set in such eras as World War II, the Vietnam War, the near future, and the distant future. It's still one of the few games that brings you closest to real combat experience in modern warfare, even more so with this game because it's set in a real conflict, instead of fighting fictional terrorists like in prior Delta Force games. If you get sick of playing games where you can dodge a bullet fired 20 feet away at you (such as in Destroy All Humans), or 3rd person games in general where for some reason you're watching your character from slightly above its head, and need to awkwardly maneuver the camera to see what you want to see, or are sick and tired of any of the numerous aspects of games that fly in the face of realism, Delta Force is the game to play. It may not simulate exactly what goes on in a typical

As for this game in particular, if you could only buy one game in the Delta Force series, I'd instead recommend Landwarrior or Xtreme. Landwarrior is less buggy, has a more linear storyline, and takes you to a greater variety of locales. Xtreme is also one of the "prettiest" Delta Force games, where you'll find better, more modern graphics and some new weapons like Flashbangs. However, if you see this game at the bargain rack of store for less than $20, I'd suggest buying it. If you have the right graphics card, its bugs won't be serious enough to really bother you too much, and you'll probably have a good time playing it.

As for this game in particular, if you could only buy one game in the Delta Force series, I'd instead recommend Landwarrior or Xtreme. Landwarrior is less buggy, has a more linear storyline, and takes you to a greater variety of locales. Xtreme is also one of the "prettiest" Delta Force games, where you'll find better, more modern graphics and some new weapons like Flashbangs. However, if you see this game at the bargain rack of store for less than $20, I'd suggest buying it. If you have the right graphics card, its bugs won't be serious enough to really bother you too much, and you'll probably have a good time playing it.